Hello and welcome to all my new subscribers (so many new subscribers!)! I’m so happy you’re here except for the collateral and proportionate Anxiety Effect, like: the more people who sign onto this newsletter, the more I need to be producing something worth your time. I’m still trying to figure out what my Topic is. I kinda want to be writing about everything—be a Generalist, like Roger Federer was before he zeroed in on tennis as his sport of choice (note my self-confidence growing the longer I let this analogy stand). On the other hand, I also want to be writing only about Middle Age (as you might have guessed), largely as antidote to all the content out there on the subject, which is all so…happy. So rah rah. Fifty Schmifty. Fifty and Fine. #SorryNotSorry. I find this all mostly nauseating. Who are these people with their thigh masters and romanticized senses of self?
Fine, we know who they are. But still. Gross.
A couple weeks ago, I was at a dinner with four other women, all in their late 40s. Some married, some single. Some with kids, some without. A former publicist, a journalist, a writer, a former bookstore owner. All very successful women. All FABULOUS. We went around the table sharing where we are with our careers and our lives and pretty much each of us was in tears at some point during our disclosures. There was no: fifty and fabulous. It was more like: I can’t stop sweating and have nascent facial hair. I self-sabotage, I am overwhelmed, I have no idea what to do next. We talked about how gratitude is often weaponized against women—how we’re not allowed to complain about our lives because people are starving out there, dying out there, and, Jesus, we are the lucky ones. Which is all true. And also the kind of reminder designed to keep women, in particular, in their place.
I’m finding middle age—and mine has just started—to be challenging. I’m kind of obsessed with it. And shocked. I can’t believe I’m almost 50. And that whatever I’ve accomplished so far feels negligible and not any kind of foundation for whatever’s coming next. Talk about unsettling…
Fifty is also, I’m noticing, a popular threshold for everything bad. Like: increasingly dire vulnerabilities to, well, Covid, Shingles, colon cancer, dementia, brittle bones, etc. Want to read the most horrifying website ever? No? Well, I’m gonna share it with you anyway: Fifty unexpected miseries you can still expect come fifty. See what they did there? 50 for 50? Clever, SEO marketers. On their hotlist is that I’m shrinking and losing my libido, but compensating with MORE nasal secretions; I am also getting fat, deaf, incontinent, DRY, and depressed. Wicked, Awesome.
Sidenote: Everything about this pairing of headline with stock photo seems wrong. Just sayin’.
Anyway, folks. Welcome to the Stack. And, um, maybe a new podcast, too, because a) everyone has one and b) I know a lot of interesting, hilarious people (wait, do I?) who can probably be hilarious on command, for no money. Because that’s Art.